Army reins in invites to Obama, Biden & spouses

1/2/13 6:04 PM EST

Breaches of protocol have led the Army to warn its units and commands not to invite President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden or their spouses to events without going through top Army brass at the Pentagon.

In a service-wide memo dated Dec. 21, Secretary of the Army John McHugh alluded to unspecified incidents in which Obama or Biden were asked to attend military events and apparently agreed to, all without the knowledge of Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta's office.

"I have learned that, in recent weeks, various entities or organizations in the Department of Defense (DoD) invited the POTUS and VPOTUS to attend DoD-related events. Regrettably, these invitations were not coordinated through the Office of the Secretary of Defense. As a result, senior DoD leaders were unaware that the POTUS or VPOTUS planned to attend the DoD-related event, and protocol procedures for such important visits were compromised," McHugh wrote in the memo, which was posted on at least two public Army websites in recent days (and is available here).

McHugh's memo is silent on whether any of the below-the-radar invites involved the Army. However, he instructed Army personnel that all future invites to the president, vice president or their spouses be routed through the White House liaison to the Army Chief of Staff. The memo doesn't mention Obama, Biden or their spouses by name, so it presumably would apply to any future officeholders or their spouses as well.

The Army referred comment about the memo to Panetta's office, which had no official response.

However, a senior defense official, who asked not to be named, told POLITICO Wednesday that officials across the department have been told to make sure top Pentagon brass is in the loop on all such invites.

"There have been some instances across the Department and the Services in which invitations extended to senior White House officials, including the President, have not been coordinated with the Office of the Secretary of Defense. OSD components and the Services were reminded that it is good practice to advise the entire chain of command inside the Pentagon of invitations extended to the President, Vice President, and other officials. This was all in the spirit of good common sense," said the defense official, who declined to specify the particular events or invitations in question.

Asked if Obama or Biden actually appeared in response to the invites, the official said: "I won't get into examples, but senior officials did attend the events."

It was not immediately clear whether the other services had issued directives similar to McHugh's.

A White House spokesman did not respond to a query about the unsanctioned invites.

UPDATE (Wednesday, 6:28 P.M.): This post has been updated with comments from a senior defense official and the query lodged with the White House.